I halted at the edge of the cliff. The wind whipped at my hair and nightgown, slapping them against my skin. The sensation felt far too real for my comfort.
“You’d rather jump off a cliff than talk to me?”
I screamed at the sound of the devil’s voice and spun around to face him. He stood behind me, arms folded. Even in my dream my skin itched from his nearness.
Around him the darkness gathered. “No matter,” he said, answering his own question. “I’ll be seeing you tonight. Meet me at the Braaid after sunset.”
“No.” I turned to jump, more afraid of the devil than I was of falling.
The devil caught my arm and spun me back around, his eyes moving over my face. “That wasn’t a question.”
I pulled my arm from his grasp and didn’t hesitate. I jumped.
***
I woke with a jolt. Early morning sunlight streamed into my room, turning my exposed skin rose petal pink. Outside my window students ran around in costumes or set up booths on the grassy lawn for the Samhain school fair.
Samhain. The day I was supposed to meet the devil.
I stepped out of bed, noticing that both Leanne and Oliver had already left. The message from my dream was still fresh in my mind, and one word in particular drew me to my desk.
I snatched the poem Cecilia had sent me from the drawer. The poem had mentioned corpse roads—ley lines—amongst other things. And it mentioned another term I had not paid much attention to.
I reread the poem.
Death will strike before Halloween,
The mark of the damned, the killer unclean,
If you walk the old corpse road where the dead ley,
Sprites and devils might snatch you away,
Go to the Braaid and you’ll lose your soul,
For an entrance into hell, such is the toll.
In the last two lines I spotted the term I was looking for. I opened my laptop and clicked on my Internet browser. As soon as my homepage loaded, I searched for one word. Braaid.
I clicked on the first link.
The Braaid began as a stone circle site and later became a Viking farmstead.
Next to the text was an image of the Braaid, made up of a ring of standing stones. Beneath the photo the caption dated the circle to 650 A.D. Not even centuries of exposure had torn the site apart.
A stone circle. I didn’t know anything about stone circles, except that there were several of them on the British Isles.
I opened a new tab and searched Wikipedia for stone circles. My eyes moved over the page, filtering out the mundane information and concentrating on the unusual.
Stone circles are sometimes related to gravesites, and are often thought to have had a ceremonial function due to the lack of artifacts associated with them.
Whatever their purpose, stone circles are often oriented on sight lines for the rising and setting sun, and so are thought to be associated with the seasons.
My palms began to sweat. I did a final search, this one on the location of the Braaid. A map of the Isle of Man appeared on my screen. A pin had been dropped on the location of the Braaid.
I held Cecilia’s notecard up to my screen, using it as a ruler. I lined up the two crime scenes farthest apart—the first victim in Glen Maye and the second in Douglas Cemetery. The Braaid sat right on the line.
I covered my mouth.
The demons had been ordered to kill by their leader. This whole time I’d been thinking that the devil’s plans for me and the murders were separate. But Leanne had known all along. They were building up to a single, final event on Samhain. An event that involved me.
This was the secret Leanne had withheld this whole time, the secret too terrible for me to hear. Tonight, if I followed the devil’s instructions, I’d be the fourth victim.
Chapter 19
I didn’t see both of my roommates until late that afternoon. I wandered down to the fair for a little while, buying a caramel apple for myself and a couple of happiness tonics from a witch’s booth for Leanne and Oliver. I tried to enjoy the festivities, but having a meeting with the devil really sucked the fun out of things. Eventually I returned to my room to mull over my situation.
All the previous victims were killed by demons along the ley line. I wasn’t sure whether this same fate was intended for me, but I doubted it. The devil, not a demon, wanted to meet me tonight, and like Andre had mentioned earlier in the week, he was interested in my soul.
This was all hypothetical—I wasn’t actually planning on meeting up with the devil. In fact, knowing where he’d be would make it that much easier to avoid him this evening.
“What in the Goddess’s name are you doing?” Leanne said, entering the room and finding me sitting on the ground, notes on the murders strewn around me. “You haven’t been in here all day, have you?” She eyed me up and down.
I met her gaze. “I know what’s going to happen tonight.”
Her face paled, but she didn’t look particularly surprised. “Stay away from the Braaid.”
“I wasn’t planning on going,” I said not missing a beat.